Universal Voter Registration

Advancement Project Attorney Donita Judge Discusses Universal Voter Registration At Special Cuny Event

Last week, Advancement Project Attorney Donita Judge joined other voting rights advocates to discuss national voter registration reform during City University of New York’s daylong multi-panel conference, Charting A Path Toward Universal Voter Registration in the United States, held on February 27 in New York City. Judge participated on the “Further Strategies for Achieving Universal Voter Registration” panel, which focused on revitalizing the National Voter Registration Act as well as reviewed Election Day registration, portable voter registration, and other procedures that play important roles in an overall system to achieve near-universal registration.

"There is a need for an explicit right to vote in the U.S. Constitution and, in America, no right is considered more fundamental than our right to vote," said Judge. "However, instead of one democracy, we have 13,000 separate sets of rules and regulations across the country about who can vote and how they do so. We must be clear about the implications of living in a nation where federal law doesn’t guarantee the right to vote to anyone—millions of Americans were unable to participate in this election because of the unnecessary rules in states throughout the country that impede the voting process."

During the panel presentation, Judge provided the following key strategies to achieving an affirmative right to vote:

Inspire a Movement—Establish a grassroots movement to capture the passion of the 2008 election, no matter where the political spectrum may fall.

Claim the Moral High Ground—Start from the premise that voting is a right, not a privilege or luxury that can be withheld from those deemed unworthy (i.e., persons with felony convictions) or those who cannot overcome arbitrary obstacles.

Build a Strong, Diverse and Effective Coalition—The right to vote movement needs an infrastructure that provides leadership, a process for decision making, and mechanisms for sharing information and coordinating activities.

Finalize Content and Language—After the right to vote coalition has decided upon the content and scope of the proposal, it would be wise to develop several alternative versions of the language that can then be vetted for a months or even years during which time scholars, including constitutional law experts, could write articles on the meaning and implications of each version.

Engage in Intense Public Education—Design an effective communications strategy to permit the right to vote supporters to control the terms of the debate and stay on the offense.

Gauge Support for a Constitutional Right to Vote—Between 2005 and 2006, Advancement Project engaged in series of focus groups across the country to gain understanding of the public’s perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes on the right to vote and related issues.

As a staff attorney at Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, Judge serves as the state lead attorney covering Ohio. Since 2006, she has provided extensive testimony in Ohio on the rights of third-party groups to register voters and has engaged in strong advocacy to prevent voter suppression prior to the 2006 and 2008 Ohio elections. In 2006, Judge also successfully advocated for the rights of the displaced citizens of New Orleans to vote in the first election after Hurricane Katrina and to have a voice in rebuilding their city.

Judge is an adjunct professor in the African-African/African Studies Department at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ where she teaches the course, “The African-American, the Law, and the Courts.” She graduated with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and received her J.D. from Rutgers School of Law-Newark, where she served as editor of the Rutgers Race and the Law Review, selected a Kinoy/Stavis Public Interest Fellow, an NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Earl Warren Scholar, and the recipient of the Judge J. Skelly Wright Prize. Prior to joining Advancement Project, Judge clerked for the Honorable Michelle Hollar-Gregory in New Jersey Superior Court-Newark.

Other participants sharing insights along with Judge on the Further Strategies for Achieving Universal Voter Registration panel included Michael McDonald, George Mason University and Wendy Weiser, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

ENDS

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